Words Carefully Chosen

Poet Matt Daly considers the special beauty of language and the West

This bonus newsletter is a monthly feature for paid subscribers, the fourth in the series. These extras showcase edited interviews with someone whose work intersects in some way with this newsletter’s focus—place, history, writing. I hope you enjoy this one and those to come.

Introduction

I attended my first writer’s workshop at Fishtrap in summer 2019 and met Matt Daly. Our instant connection there has been nurtured through a couple visits to Jackson Hole where he lives and a shared belief that writing matters. Matt is a key character in a forthcoming essay of mine about a quest to hear elk bugle.

As you’ll read below, Matt is a thoughtful poet and creative teacher. Besides writing, Matt is the executive director of Jackson Hole Writers. His second book of poetry, The Invisible World, is due out from Unsolicited Press in September 2024.

(NOTE: the following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

Wyoming-based, always-buoyant, poet Matt Daly. (courtesy of Matt Daly)

Adam

How do you describe yourself and your work?

Matt Daly

As a writer, I describe myself as a poet. And lifelong Westerner is a term I use, which is true. My writing is primarily lyrical poetry that emerges out of places that I've experienced. I think it’s a sort of place-focused poetry, so a lot of it is western American.

And I guess I'm interested in what I would put in. Like thinking about how the details of place inform life or worldview or ethics or morals or any of those sorts of things, how the big things are grounded in the sort of minutiae of a rural, semi-rural western life.

Adam

Your website says, “Matt Daly is a Wyoming-based poet, artist and teacher. Primarily working in words, he regularly draws upon the imagery and rhythms of his homeground in the American West.” Can you say more about why or how Wyoming and the West are imprinted on you?

Matt

First of all, I just love that the term, homeground that I learned about from Debra Gwartney and Barry Lopez’s book, Home Ground. Such a brilliant work. And I just love that term because it does feel that way. I sometimes try to write poems where Wyoming doesn't show up. And then it shows up. I live near the Snake River, and the word river is showing up all the time. The river itself is present all the time.

I think part of it is the context of the poems. The weathers that emerge regardless of if they're even mentioned in the poem. If working with or rendering a moment from my experience, there's a western slant to the light. There's a western quality to the clouds that are piling up. All of that.

Wyoming has these grand places. And then the sparseness. You know what I mean? You've been in the the sage flats adjacent to the Tetons. Take away the Tetons, and that landscape is harsh and dry. But you investigate it closely and there's range and diversity and pockets of lushness. I sort of like playing with that.

Adam

You grew up in Jackson. And went away. And came back. Did that distance change how you understood or responded to your home ground?